NorthWood’s football team carries the flag as our top team of the 2016-17 athletic season after making a run to the IHSAA Class 4-A state finals. (File photos by Mike Deak)

WARSAW – History repeated itself for much of our Ink Free News Top 10 teams, and life was rinse and repeat for a lot of our top five. Warsaw’s girls running programs – cross country and track – continue to carve its niche, and a couple of diamond dwellers lead up to our top program of the 2016-17 season, the NorthWood football team.

5. Keeping Up With Expectations – Most programs labor for years trying to make a single state finals appearance. The Warsaw girls cross country team bus ought to have a reserved parking space at the Lavern Gibson Championship Course.

The Lady Tigers earned a sixth straight cut out to the IHSAA state finals last fall in Terre Haute, where they wrapped up their 2016 campaign in 13th place. That trip to the state finals came on the heels of a sixth straight sectional title and fourth straight regional championship, as well as an outright Northern Lakes Conference title that included an undefeated run through the NLC regular season and a tournament championship.

Warsaw’s girls were so dominant during tournament season that their top two runners — Mia Beckham and Allison Miller — took the top two spots at the NLC Championships, the Tigers placed each of their top seven runners in the top 14 at the Culver Girls Academy Sectional, then claimed four of the top 10 spots at the CGA Regional on the way to a dominant 30-point score. Just for the sake of comparison, Manchester’s runner-up score was over 70 points higher than that winning tally.

That kind of dominance has just become the norm for the program.

“We expect it now,” said head coach Matt Campbell after the Tigers secured their sixth straight sectional title.

Warsaw wasn’t really tested until the New Prairie Semi-State, where the team took third behind runner-up Lowell and champion Valparaiso, which finished 18 points ahead of the Tigers’ score of 130.

Warsaw’s girls ought to be pretty good next year, too. They’ll lose three of their top seven, including Miller, but Beckham and four of the top seven should return.

4. The Streaks Continue – The Warsaw girls track program may have had a new coach this spring.

But it was a case of the same old, same old when it comes to piling up championships for the ladies from the Lake City.

Warsaw, under the direction of Matt Thacker, won the Northern Lakes Conference meet for the 12th straight year. The team went undefeated in the league in the regular season again at 7-0, running its NLC dual meet winning streak to 60 in a row.

The Tigers also won their 11th straight sectional championship on their home track and followed that up with a sixth consecutive regional title the following week in May at South Bend St Joseph’s.

Warsaw capped off its season by sending a strong contingent of competitors to the State Finals. Mia Beckham led the way in the season finale as she finished seventh in the 1,600 to earn a medal.

Warsaw also had all three of its outstanding relay teams compete at State. The 4 X 800 team of Angie Sanchez-Vijil, Remi Beckham, Anna Craig and Dayton Groninger placed 11th. The 4 X 100 team of Maygan Bellamy, Makayla Clampitt, Abbi Curtis and Shunterra Davis was 13th and the 4 X 400 team of Bellamy, Sanchez-Vijil, Remi Beckham and Kenzie Martz placed 16th.

Lexie Day was 15th in the high jump at State after tying the school record to win a regional title in her specialty.

3. Making Wawasee Great Again – The standard of excellence had been set the previous two seasons. Wawasee’s softball team decided to take it a step further. Already having enjoyed conference and sectional success the past three years, a regional championship and a taste of its first semi-state has softball in Syracuse trending upward.

With a graduating class of nine in the program, expectations were already sky high and the seniors made it a historic season. Rattling off its first-ever undefeated Northern Lakes Conference title and third straight conference crown, Wawasee has won 25 NLC games in a row dating back to last year. A 25-win season set the mark for the most wins in team history, and the win at Fort Wayne Concordia in the regional was also a first in six tries in program history.

The team statistics were staggering for the Lady Warriors, which combined to hit nearly .350 as a team and seven players hit at least .350, Ale Brito (.448), Meghan Fretz (.416) and Leah deSomer (.407) all over .400. Fretz led the team with six homers and 43 RBI, and was 15-3 in the circle with 142 strikeouts. For her efforts, Fretz was named an All-State player and first-year head coach Mike Barger was named to the All-State coaching staff. The program also saw Christy Carson, Hannah Haines, Amber Lemberg, Riley Kunkle, Madie Wilson and Kayla White contribute to the most wins ever from a class at 87.

For those who feel Wawasee will fall mightily with its big graduation numbers, it’s JV won all 11 of its NLC games and still returns five varsity regulars next year.

2. Kings of Diamonds – If you were a NorthWood team somehow trying to match what the Black Crunch football team did in 2016, you’d have your work cut out for you. And yet the Panthers baseball team came pretty close.

While NorthWood football didn’t lose a single game until the state championship, NW baseball reeled off 26 straight wins after dropping its season-opener in extra innings. That unbelievable record-setting streak including a perfect, 14-0 finish in the Northern Lakes Conference — culminating in a thrilling 1-0 win at Plymouth in the team’s league closer — a fifth-straight sectional championship and the program’s first regional title since 1983.

Originally slated to host Class 3-A Sectional 21, the Panthers were forced to move the tournament to Wawasee due to ongoing rainy weather, but they made themselves at home in Syracuse, first downing the NLC-rival Warriors 11-4 and then shelling Lakeland 14-0 for the title.

NorthWood survived an eight-inning duel with Fort Wayne Concordia Lutheran in the first round of Bellmont Regional play, 7-5, and rolled to a 10-0, five-inning regional championship win over Yorktown in the night game for the program’s first such title in six straight tries at the regional level, as well as its first since 1983.

The Panthers ultimately fell to South Bend St. Joseph via a competitive, 8-5 decision at the Plymouth Semistate last weekend, and it’s a loss that’s bound to sting for awhile said head coach Jay Sheets. But he hopes that in time his team — which included a core of five seniors in Jaron Mullett, Drake Gongwer, Travis Stephenson, Drew Minnich and Vincent Hershberger — can allow that last loss to be overshadowed by the rest of the squad’s accomplishments over a stellar 26-2 season.

“I told them that this one is going to sting for awhile. It’s going to be a tough pill to swallow,” Sheets said following semistate.

“(B)ut I told them ‘Don’t forget everything else we did — 26-2, 14-0 we ran the table in the conference, winning a regional for the first time in 34 years or whatever it is… They made my job easy, and I had a fun four years with the older guys.”

Back In Black – NorthWood football is back, baby.

Traditionally, the Panthers had been a powerhouse on the northern Indiana football scene. If the Black Crunch were coming to your town, you knew you were likely in for a long Friday night, and 17 sectional championships, 10 regional titles and five state finals appearances spoke for themselves. Then, for a few years, some of the excitement surrounding the program started to dwindle.

But NorthWood football experienced something of a renaissance in 2016, thanks to an explosive team that rattled off 14 straight wins before suffering its first and only defeat at the hands of top-ranked Roncalli in the Class 4-A state championship game, and Andrews Field once again became the place to be on Friday night in Nappanee.

Things first began to change about three years ago when hometown hero Nate Andrews — son of legendary coach and the namesake of the Panthers’ home field, Jim Andrews — returned to take the reins of the program. The team has shown steady improvement under the younger Andrews’ guidance, culminating in 2016’s thrilling run.

The Black Crunch may have fallen short of their ultimate goal via that 34-22 loss at Lucas Oil Stadium, but if it was a tough note to end on, it did little if anything to diminish the team’s many triumphs.

The numbers themselves were gaudy as NorthWood averaged 37 points per game over the season and an average margin of victory of 26.42 points in its 14 wins. Altogether, the Black Crunch scored 86 touchdowns over the course of the year, and they did so via a prolific and balanced offensive attack that saw an average of 228 passing yards and 223 rushing yards gained a night on the way to program first 4-A regional and semistate titles.

You don’t put up those kinds of numbers without a deep and talented roster, and football coaches and pundits certainly took notice of a number of NorthWood’s top talents.

Drew Minnich won the Phil N. Eskew Mental Attitude Award following the 4-A state finale, and he was also awarded AP All-State honors alongside leading receiver DeAndre Smart. Quarterback Trey Bilinski and offensive lineman Andrew Miller were given honorable mention on the AP’s all-state rolls, while Bilinski, Minnich, Brayton and Bronson Yoder and Will Ingle were all awarded IFCA All-State status. Additionally, eight Panthers were named first Team All-Northern Lakes Conference after running the table in the NLC, and three more were tabbed for conference honorable mention.

NorthWood loses 12 players to graduation, including several at key spots in the lineup — most notably Bilinski and Minnich — but don’t be surprised to see another run by the team next fall: 2016 made us all believe again.